Conservative Senators Take
A More Independent Line

By

Greg Hitt Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Jan. 13, 1999 12:41 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON -- With passions boiling over in a closed-door GOP Senate caucus last week, conservative Chuck Hagel, the junior senator from Nebraska, stood to urge calm. "Let's just cool down for a minute," Mr. Hagel said, reaching out to party elders as well as his colleagues on the back bench. "We are no longer Republican members here."

He was referring to the oath all senators had taken a few hours earlier to serve as jurors in the impeachment trial of President Clinton. But in some sense, Mr. Hagel...